[Wikipedia-l] Helga again

[Michael R. Irwin]

Karl Juhnke wrote:
> 
> --- "Michael R. Irwin" <mri_icboise at surfbest.net> wrote:
> > Personally I feel censorship in any form is a
> > slippery slope towards totalitarianism and attempted mind
> > control which is best avoided entirely, if possible.
> 
> Mike,
> 
> Your concluding sentence about the "slippery slope towards
> totalinarianism" clarifies for me why you comment at length on a
> situation about which you admit to not knowing the particulars.  The
> details appear to be less relevant in your view of things than the
> abstract principle at stake.

Abstract principles can be important and useful.
Governing principles are often stated well in the
abstract and then ignored in practice.  This often
causes problems that could be avoided.

Our recent pattern is interesting.  From the outside they look
a great deal like previous incidents.  A couple of which I
personally witnessed.  Others only fragmentary clues remained.

If one uncooperative person is banned then clearly the project 
can survive and prosper.  If the only method for dealing with 
controversy is banning, then it may be inappropriate for me to expend 
further time here.  Fear not!  I am quite capable of disappearing
when I decide too, nobody need yell "Good riddance!" to expedite
the decision.  Likewise I will simply take a break when I feel the 
need, and likely be back quickly.  Some have put it on record that 
the project is at risk of losing good people if "problems" cannot be
eliminated (by banning) after reasonable time.   I merely wish 
to place it on record that similar risks are available from 
excessive banning.  It has already been publicly alleged in 
several online forums (the spanish fork {hearsay, I do not
speak spanish}, geocities, advogato, kurohin5, this mailing 
list, and meta) that censorship is a risk or problem here at 
Wikipedia.  This is not a good reputation to cultivate.  It 
discourages participation.

The current policy of edit boldly serene in the knowledge
that others will do the same effectively forms a feedback
loop that should converge on a product output of high quality 
mainstream views (NPOV'ed material substantiated in detail) if 
sufficient participation is available.

Moving from edit wars to routine banning risks breaking 
the fundamental assumptions implicit in the above.  

> 
> I am prone to this sort of thinking myself, i.e. I think very
> abstractly and in terms of principle.  For example, I don't drink a
> drop of alcohol myself, because even a glass of wine with dinner at
> home among the family is in principle connected to impaired brain
> function, drunk driving, alcoholism, wrecked kidneys, wrecked
> relationships, etc., etc.  I must make a concerted effort to understand
> that moderation is possible, and that not every situation in life is a
> slippery slope.

This one seems to be one though.  The frequency of incidents
seems to be growing and the chosen response seems to be
settling into a routine.  Not necessarily a problem if the
goal is to exceed the quality of a 1911 public domain encyclopedia
or present a slightly more neutral world view (acceptable
to "Western" scholastic authorities) than Brittanica.
IMO Broad, deep, reliable requires more than merely regurgitating
material already published for profit in western academia.  

> 
> There are practical, incremental differences between modes of
> contribution to Wikipedia.  It is apparently difficult to know exactly
> when to draw a line and say that someone is behving unacceptably.  

Perhaps.  Perhaps it merely has not been written down precisely.
Perhaps, we aggressively advertise one thing on the front and 
orientation pages to encourage participation and then selectively 
enforce something else.

If community approval and trust is required to remain an
editor then this should be emphasized up front so that
newcomer's know to fan out and develop contacts with like
minded people.

Eventually a trust metric similar to that used by advogato.com
could be used by the community to establish peer ratings, if
these are required to remain active in the community.

But
> I would hope that we can clearly distinguish banning an individual from
> totalitarianism, to the same extent that we can distinguish
> incorporating opposing views from anarchy and descent into
> meaninglessness.

My hopes are similar.  Personally I favor setting up some robust
procedures that work well without resort to the current "owner"
or enforcer.  Mr. Wales has done an excellent job so far, but I hope 
and fear his available time for managing controversy and enacting 
bans will not scale up as rapidly as the contributing community.

It is also interesting to note that his diplomatic skills are not
typcially currently brought into play until the current alleged 
problem is highly irate and defensive.   This leads me to suspect
that we may not be getting maximum benefit from his efforts.  Of
course this conclusion is derived from my contention that there
is plenty of work to go around and we need access to as many
viewpoints as possible.   Others may feel a more homogenous 
cooperative group is perfectly capable of writing a broad, deep, 
reliable Wikipedia.

> 
> Without saying anything particular about Helga, I would encourage you
> to construct your arguments somewhat differently.  Rather than
> identifying a single principle in a situation and imagining that
> principle at its extremes, try to identify *as many principles as
> possible* and imagine how each governs and regulates the others.  You
> may find that your thinking becomes less clear and less easy to
> express, but in my humble experience, reality itself is not necessarily
> clear and easy to express.

LOL  I may someday call on you as a character witness should
others once again locally become tired of my efforts at fuzzy 
integrated reasoning.

I am well aware that tradeoffs are often required in real
world projects.   The trick is to avoid trading away the 
project's chances of success while being "practical".  Nothing
practical about iron with insufficient inpurities to achieve
specified alloy properties.  Typically, it will collapse far
short of design goals.

IMO The current problem is not the diverse viewpoints that we
are running off but that highly valued "regulars" with 
proven contribution records get tired of deleting or modifying
front page material to keep the material's reliability up.
I contend that reducing our project team or community's 
diversity is not an appropriate method of revision control.
Elsewhere I have proposed implementing a "code walkthough"
where approval by two or three logged in accounts is required
to place changes on the current page.

This should easily reduce the poor material currently residing 
on the current articles by at least an order of magnitude,
Without running off diverse viewpoints.   Helga, Art, "24",
myself, the previous incarnation of the Cuncator, and a few others 
no longer with us could learn to modify their writings to attract 
approval required to move from the draft to current page without 
much of the heated controversy and repetitive wasted efforts that 
currently results from the inverted process:  Place your material 
on the current page and see if anyone deletes, modifies, or yells
about it.

This method would allow Mr. Sanger (and the rest of us) to follow 
his widely published advice and ignore perceived trolls, at 
least until the material is reviewed/modified/approved by two 
others ..... possibly mistakenly.  The "troll" may also be less
defensive or even quiet while other faction members with better
social skills help defend or modify the material.  Factions could
not be ignored, but this is no loss as they cannot currently be
ignored.  Also, it is a well known characteristic of negotiations
that they proceed best with multiple items or views in play, this
gives the parties face saving manuevering room.

On the downside:

1.  Some people feel the immediate wiki gratification of "edit
any page" will be lost from modification to: "go to the draft
version in progress and propose any change for a random editor
to approve".

2.  Certain obvious problems such as people creating multiple
accounts can be reduced somewhat via appropriate software.

Diplomacy efforts will still be required.  The above is certainly
not a cure all.  The minute sufficient approval is gathered but
the material is unacceptable to another faction then we have
another controversy.  It should be easier to mediate between
two teams of 3 people than with one out numbered person placed on 
the defensive by the mailing list's current "run em off" tactics.

Others have proposed other solutions to help manage controversy
or improve reliability and quality via other forms of
revision control.

Well, I fuzzied up this email slightly in response to your
request for less rigid adherence to extreme reasoning regarding
singular issues.  I hope it is still somewhat coherent. Perhaps 
I should emulate the star in "Mission to Mars", in all future 
lengthy fuzzy posts I may prepend:

"It wasn't me!"  or "It was his idea!"

regards,
Mike Irwin